You can't stop change but you can stop progress, either by stasis or by regression, but only temporarily! People lose their way, either by envy or by privilege, and then determinism may become brittle and change emerges by a break-away mutation or a non-conforming happy or unhappy accident that disables permanence releasing change.
Firstly evolutionary mutation (progressive or regressive) maybe delayed but is inevitable and is the Human social DNA, and secondly power can be so corrupt and so oppressive that feuding Oligarchs make tangential the social discourse, or that impacts as a form of excess that exposes the filter between the rulers and the ruled; neither can be returned to original state as Pandora's box does it again!. But it is 'regression' that plays a key role as a weak link (even if it is expressed in a dictatorial way) to induce change. Furthermore, Regression is crucial to a dialectic for upgrade or contrast within an internal discourse where even mild change, even in a limited procedural alteration that may or may not need to be under the public radar. Even a small re-organisation, even as a conservative with a small 'c' reaffirmation -there is no permanence in the evolutionary process.
In our era, change today seems to be based upon specifically change in Russia. No longer do we have post-Cold War Russia, but a post Oligarch Russia where Russia reflects a post Presidential, post quasi-imperial Russia, but a nationalistic expansionist dictatorship without any semblance of benign patriarchal role, but a dominant 'terrain- belligerent', by becoming the engine of transformation at tank-point! Putin has concentrated his fire on change that has betrayed the Western investment after 1989 at the end of the Cold War in Berlin. From then to now, Russia has got used to being a change-maker in which ever form he has made. Don't be fooled! His territorial invasion of Ukraine is meant to look like 19th century Imperialism, but is actually him monopolising how Russian nationalism can influence the global economy and eventually confirm that as international markets dry-up for wanting gas and oil (Russia stands to lose the most in Europe when Russian unlimited resources of fossil fuels are no longer an economic advantage and will in time become irrelevant), Russia will still be wanting and ready to take revenge on fearful ex-customers by being at the centre and as the most powerful player, when European transformation to a 'Green economy takes place. But he is not just jockeying for position, he wants to determine change, how and where it occurs, and he wants to be that change that Europe cowers in his Shadow! It is not just the Europeans that are staggered by this enforcement of European Russian dominance, but some Americans who are demanding that America has its own counter position that I believe is based upon Russian self- importance; 'America first' may be in part Americans not wanting to be behind Russian Catalyst slipstream! Putin is embarking not on a retro 19th century Imperialism, but to be the personification of more than simple regime change or Cold War blow-back, but as having a taste for being at the very epicentre of post-Cold War investment and Capitalist creativity, and he wants more!
The era of Art market today bears out how the recent explosion from investment and purchasing power of hugely wealthy millionaires from Russia can be. But such has been their dominance that they have almost confiscated the market for seminal Modernist Paintings specifically Russian Painters to please their boss -Putin. Now the nihilism and cynicism of such monopolies has encouraged the almost 'mummification' of these rare works into private vaults, until they can be sold for massive profits!!? These new 'blinding of the public' Art formats are preventing any visual experience even for the Russian public, and so a Painting becomes a commodity of 'how many people will never see such Paintings' and not just as financial commodity that I'm sure the original Painter would never have wanted; It is a sequestrating of the past by the rich who want to control when or where they can be the agents of change, on their terms! Welcome to Russian expansionism where Putin wants to correlate military expansionism with aggressive purchase or terrain stealing, and opponents muzzling!
So how has Putin immersed himself with 'self-change versus stringing along people who fear his actions are only an Imperial power grab? Well, change happens whether we like it or not, from whom we like or don't like! We live in a world not governed by Nietzsche’s 'Eternal Return' completely but one in which it only partially works in today’s world. That is our era's realisation, but how? Welcome to the opposite of deconstruction, that is, reverse engineering! It often offers a choice, rather than swamp the individual with too many choices! But here's the basic premise: firstly, in crude terms, society is stuck with social classes, but instead of an eternal return for every one apart from a pathological egotist, both the aristocracy and the poor under the poverty line are subjected to a permanent social class structure unable to extract themselves, and will repeat their lives over and over and over again. Meanwhile perhaps the social demographic between them has potential to self-transform by either failure or success but will become entrenched if they rise or fall in the social structure - access to change, but free to be self-sustaining out of choice or devalue or upgrade! secondly, it is the narrative of high born and low born who can self-aggrandise and transform their lives away from the social barriers and social strictures that contain the middle classes who will live mindlessly predictable lives repeated over and over and over again.
But there is hope today that this terrifying live-die-repeat can be altered. Firstly, evolution teaches us that social paralysis will mutate eventually, but secondly Pandora's box of permanence will also contain the uncontainable or inflammable ingredients, and as a result of such controlling apparatus, it will need to be replace and reproduced. Under such controlled conditions that it leads to a burst of the bubble or a boiling-up and eventually over-spilling the random unpredictable contents, where Fate versus Fortune is unravelling stasis and paralysis. This catharsis gives freedom to have agency to self-transform albeit cyclically or pendulumically.
But have no doubt, eternal return can be entrenched and be deceivingly permanent, but any re- think of social demographics re-wiring of social or economic or cultural dynamics or over social reproduction cannot contain new technology and its application globally, nor can eternal return be permanent if it is competing internationally with greed or envy or military capabilities yet untried! So, if you reverse engineer the end of play that starts with 'objective-led' executes what to end with you can self-transform 'backwards'. Then you can decipher and unpick how omnipotent deconstruction becomes and at what form of relativism that it contrives to be deterministic and hegemonically in control. 'All is assimilation, or all can be absorbed or repeated,' is no longer the Western connivance with breaking down all absolutism (historically pitted against the didactic dogma of Marxist-Leninism) until it becomes absolutist itself!!? Reconstruction unravels the very Frankensteinian monster that behaves like an ideology of a philosophical black-hole that will self- consume and cannibalise- it becomes not an ally but a threat etc Hence the very argument above for its limitation and the exploration of its relevancy in today’s epoch, but it does mean that similar values and ideas will cyclically recalibrate and impinge, it's just that we have means to put it into perspective, even though there is 'ironically' no permanent solution because that monster is also subjected to the same cycles of mutation too!
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